Palestinian pollution

With no sewage plant, Gaza’s waste is dumped into the sea, making it unsafe for fishing or swimming according to a recent report.

It was envisioned to be Gaza’s open-ended source of possibilities. But the Gaza shore is now too polluted to use safely.

It is estimated that 20 million cubic metres of raw sewage are pumped into the sea every year through 14 discharge outlets spanning the 42km-long shore.

The stench is unbearable but it was the skin rashes children developed after swimming that drove Ramadan Abu Seif, a resident of the Al-Shate refugee camp, which is next to one of the sewage-discharge outlets, to act.

He says that he has to tell children playing by the sea to stay away. “They are kids, they don’t know”, he says.

Why is nothing being done? A treatment plant would cost $200 million, and naturally it’s someone else’s fault that there is no money:

With international sanctions still choking the struggling Palestinian economy and no political horizon in sight, addressing this menacing problem will have to wait while the cost of politics and occupation continues to mount.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 2nd, 2007 at 11:43 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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